I am surprised nobody has written about this yet, but I am seeing that back catalog downloads are up.
I first started noticing this on Daily Comedy News.
I am noticing the daily download number is almost all the way back to the ios17 haircut (ios17 changed the way auto-downloads work, costing many shows about one-third of their numbers (in 4th Quarter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) despite many of the industry fronting that it wasn’t a big deal for that first month or two. Oh yes it was!!!)
As I dive in the stats, the back catalog listening tends to come from episodes where I have name-dropped the title of a podcast. For example, “Why Smartless podcast fans are annoyed at Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett” got 17 downloads (streams, listens, earballs, whatever you want to call it) yesterday. 17 doesn’t sound like a lot, but the episode is from February 2022, and if you start doing 17 downloads across 1500 episodes, that can add up.
I think this uptick is coming from Apple Podcasts For Web. I don’t have quite enough data (nor am I a research firm) and the listening is still happening on iOS Devices - which doesn’t quite match my “for web” theory - but the timing suggests that it is because of “for web.” Maybe someone smarter than me (James Cridland???) can poke around some more.
I am also noticing back catalog is up on Sleep from Space, a ridiculous pet project of mine. Sleep from Space is the spiritual descendant of one of my favorite goofy ideas from my time at Sirius XM which was Sounds from Space.
Sounds from Space was hosted by “Fake Carl Sagan” - the character always went by that full name “Fake Carl Sagan.” FCS would deliver space facts in-between comedy clips. Why? Why not????
Then the Talent Department found out the show and started giving us real guests including David Duchovny and Michio Kaku.
I digress.
Sleep from Space has seen an increase in its back catalog downloads as well.
It should be a good month for SPACE NEWS as next week Earth gets a second moon and there will be an annular solar eclipse. So much SPACE NEWS that we’ll have to drop episodes more frequently than our usual leisurely weekly pace.
While I have the floor yesterday, I posted this on LinkedIn.
That’s it. I am not looking to start a war with someone. Someone has an opinion, and I disagree with it. I like advertising. It allows me to buy things with the money I get. I think some of the old guard thinks it’s still 2007 and podcasting is about someone with bad audio talking about their stamp collection. You early-birds built a nice thing, and now it is an industry. With commercials.
In other news, nice job by my business partner and good friend Mark Francis for coming up with Pager Protocol.
What’s nice about a two man company is we can just make things. Mark and I were texting or emailing (I tend to be an emailer even though that’s out of fashion) about the exploding pager story and Mark floated the idea of a podcast about it. I casually said something like yeah go for it - and then a few hours later I got a notification from Apple that our new series is up. LOVE IT.
At a corporation that would have been weeks of discussion and layers of bosses. What’s the old adage, move fast and break stuff? I love moving fast. Anyway, Pager Protocol wherever you get your shows! I mean, on APPLE PODCASTS (I am trying to get them to promote us.) Those other pod catchers suck, use Apple Podcasts!
Actually, I am finding that the queuing on the ios18 version of Apple Podcasts is working a little better than it used to. I find I am not “losing” shows just because I went to change the order. I still wish they’d hire the third best person from Pocket Casts and let that person run things. Or, I wish someone would just let Sam Sethi be the Overlord of Podcasting. Once Sam gets a native iOS app for TrueFans I will be using that one even more than I do now. Which reminds me, I have to stream James and Sam some sats.
And speaking of moving fast and breaking stuff - this was a spontaneous post so it probably has 50 typos, but I need to keep moving, I have shows to make!